By Joost Meuwissen
Why is it that of all the famous buildings which surrounded one of the most beautiful squares in the world, the Berlin Lustgarten by Karl Friedrich Schinkel from the 1820s, all of those buildings became extremely admired and analysed, except for the Pharmacy? Was not the Pharmacy the most important building for most of the people who lived there at the time, before it was demolished in favour of one of the world’s worst traffic breakthroughs ever made – the Kaiser Wilhelm Street? Why would the Pharmacy be less important than the Schloss, of which there are as many as there are pharmacies in Germany? The same might be said about the marvellous museum, and the voluptuous, quite eloquent cathe-dral – a sort of pre-blob. Maybe only the Arsenal (Zeughaus), just opposite the square was not paid that much attention to either, although just as the Schloss it is a masterpiece by Andreas Schlütter. Maybe the Pharmacy was not such a masterpiece of architecture after all but certainly it was the most important function at the square: it is there where you would buy your opium, and your morphine, and all the other things, called medicines at the time, which were only to be forbidden at that other war: the War on Drugs today, from the 1970s onwards. At the Pharmacy you could buy all the important things which were not for sale in any of the other buildings that surrounded the Lustgarten.The public debate should have been about rebuilding the Pharmacy.
Instead it was on whether to rebuild the Schloss or restore the Democratic Republic Asbestos Palace. Ever after the 1996 Berlin Tagesspiegel initiative, the following gremiums’s discussions, and along the Bundestag decision to rebuild the Schloss, and to demolish the Palace even after the asbestos boards and sheets had been almost completely removed already, and the sardonic complaints about the lack of money that would prevent to imple-ment the Bundestag’s democratic decision after it was made, the debate was about a sort of national symbolism which carefully avoided the past’s heroisms (which could be the only fair rationale for such a national symbol-ism though). To restore the Pharmacy would be the better symbolsymbol-ism for the whole of the site, because it would take the symbolism of the real people into account, not the one of the heroes who already had got their place within the Museum and at the Schloss Bridge. I shall try to explain this, and describe my design idea.
A Symbolism Like in the Middle Ages, consider a symbolism itself as the process of realization and build the desired Building, called Schloss, over time. Just as in Schinkel’s days, there is a proverbial lack of money now and in the near future. Consider a Gothic cathedral, which was a tremendous collective effort over the generations, and therefore do not hesitate: start laying the bricks right away. Any attempt to rebuild the Schloss would mean to do it in phases. Each generation may add its horizontal layer (storey) on top of the former one. On top of each storey, its roof, would be an Agora each time, which would rise together with the rise of the storeys over time, offering panoramical city views, which would become ever more beautiful over the generations.
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Since both the Schloss and the Pharmacy are quite well documented, there would be no need for ongoing quarrels about the meaning of the finishing shape such as the ones within the Milan cathedral building committee, which almost prevented its realisation over the centuries. It requires a pro-cedural approach, in which at the same time each phase would look inten-sive and perfect on itself. First, abandon the name Schlossplatz, because it should be a building not a square anymore. Call it Lustgarten. To reinstore the Pharmacy would be the first building phase. The Pharmacy’s function might be a pharmacy. It would close off the ugly west-east traffic artery and make the square into the quiet and joyful place meant by Schinkel. This square as well as the so-called Schloss Freedom (Schlossfreiheit) are the places where you together with your grandchildren, and they in turn with their ones, and their ones with their ones again, may admire the important Building being built again. At each building phase it would be perfect, just like Peggy Guggenheim’s Museum at the Grand Canal in Venice is perfect.
The latter one only consists of a basement and ground floor of a palazzo which was never built, and would have been probably less beautiful if the whole of the monstruous palazzo actually had been built. In the case of the Schloss I would emphasize the undeterminacy of its historical height from the urban point of view. Urbanistically, it could have had almost any height.
That is the reason its height can be built up in phases now.
Negative Urbanism Length and width of the Schloss may have been determined by some geographical and topographical conditions at the Spree Island (Spreeinsel) but the height was only determined by a set of programmatical and aesthetical considerations which must have changed over time. Although the width of the Schloss still might have varied along the length of the island, this possibility became shattered in the 1820s after the erection of the Museum and the extension of a civilian space both inwards into the museum (the whole succession of screenlike spatial vertical layers Schinkel designed behind its front façade) and outwards in front of the Museum towards the Schloss (the Lustgarten with its always quantifiable rows of trees, fountains and busts from the Museum towards the Schloss). Politically, there was no mixture possible between the civilian Lustgarten and the military Schloss at the time. In Schinkel’s successive Lustgarten designs, up to the brilliant one of summer 1828, the distance between Museum and Schloss, who were condemned to gaze at each other, was always conceived of and measured from the civilian Museum, not from the Schloss. In a way, the Schloss, being there, remained expelled from the square at the same time. That way, the Schloss was left with only a vertical extendability, a fact which was somehow helplessly pointed out by the point shape of its dome. Its political inability to extend into public space was solved by Schinkel by simply denying this inability in two ways:
the frontal distance from the Museum towards the Schloss, and a lateral distance resulting from the conical perspectivist space in front of the School of Architecture (Bauakademie), which somehow looked at something else beside the Schloss. There was no connection whatsoever from the Schloss towards a public space, the only exception being the iconographical one of the military statues on Schinkel’s Schloss Bridge (Schlossbrücke), which were mocked at by the people after their erection. Politically, culturally and urbanistically the Schloss was a closed box.
In general, the actual importance of such a historical symbolism today mostly lies in what is left out in the past. In our case it is both the unheroic Pharmacy and the undeterminacy of the Schloss’s height which were left out in various ways by Schinkel’s designs for the site. In his many designs but especially in his most beautiful Lustgarten design from summer 1828
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an aesthetic connection was neither made between his square and the Schloss, nor between the square and the Pharmacy, in the first case through an almost complete denial or what you may call negative urbanism, in the second case through simply hiding the pharmacy behind a row of lindens, which became chestnuts in the design process later on. This row itself, with a row of busts on top of rather high socles of famous civilian Germans in front of it, effectively measured and thus defined the whole of the distance between Museum and Schloss, and should be restored in order to under-stand the to-be-rebuilt Schloss as the distance evoking historical building it was. Therefore my design idea is to not only re-erect the Schloss but to also literally implement Schinkel’s Lustgarten design from the summer of 1828, the result being that the traffic artery should be removed from the site.
Practical Problems and Solutions Schinkel’s Schloss Bridge design was meant to mark the end of a street as long as the Champs Elysees axis in Paris, which also ended against a royal palace. The Schloss Bridge was never meant to be just a minor link of an even longer, elongated street. For vehicles, routes could be altered. In my opinion, regarding car traffic in Berlin, a certain acquiescence at this spot would be desirable, and hardly cause any problems elsewhere. Between the blob of the cathedral and the adjacent Pharmacy there would be of course pedestrian and bicycle pas-sage ways.
As for the public Agora the officials ask for within the Schloss I explained that historically an extendability on the same level of public space inside and outside the Schloss would make no sense, and would even make the rebuilt Schloss incomprehensible in its environment. Therefore, it is very good that the Agora is on the roof, being solely part of the building, not of the square, not at the same level of the Lustgarten as a sort of inner court extension of that same Lustgarten.
The division of the old Schloss into six or seven of its horizontal layers (sto-reys), each of which would be realised by a next generation, that is accord-ing to a rhythm of thirty years between each of them, means that to build the whole of the old Schloss would approximately take two centuries to go.
This makes the enterprise into a rare and therefore very attractive event.
It is an example of extreme ritenuto which evokes long-term expectations, and offers open possibilities for the generations to come. It might attract a lot of visitors not only on its roof. The same division makes the realisa-tion financially and funcrealisa-tionally much more flexible and easier. It means that the official wish to reserve the building for mainly cultural functions (with the adjacent commercial ones such as cafes, restaurants, bookshops, videoshops, cinemas, which nowadays form an intrinsic part of them) might be rather easily realised.
Since building materials do not cost as much as labour anymore, basement, ground, and other floors may have quite heavy constructions, in order to bear the future floors on top of them. Or, on the other hand, empty or nega-tive spots for future load bearing columns may be left out at lower floor levels in order to initially erect lighter and later to-be-filled-in constructions within the always heavier walls of the old Schloss façade.
Joost Meuwissen is professor at the departement of urban design faculty of architec-ture TU Graz, austria
Acknowledgements
Hermann G. Pundt, Schinkels Berlin (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1981).
Peter Springer, Schinkels Schlossbrücke in Berlin. Zweckbau und Monument (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1981).
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Turning the corner By
Fabian Faltin
Before we rush towards an analy-sis of the relation between urban-architectural form and ideology, politics or power, it may be helpful at first to consider if ideology itself is as an urban form. For not only is it difficult to think of an ideology that didn´t originate in an urban setting; ideology itself, taken in the most basic sense of a ´logic of ideas´, appears to have many, if not all the characteristics of urbanity.An ideology isn´t just one idea but several, densely packed and highly communicative amongst each other, short-circuited even, just as we might find a commune of citizens packed within the circular perimeter of a city wall. The communication between certain ideas creates a community of ideas, just as traffic, municipal pools and bustling market squares are often thought of as the benign creators of urban community. Ideas in an ideol-ogy are connected via arteries and nodes, along which their energy is transmitted and exchanged with vari-ous degrees of efficiency, much like in a city we find networks for transporting bodies, materials, information.
Just as we see it happening in the polis, so an ideology will police its idea-citizens, administrate them, punish the free-riders who haven´t paid for public transport or suppress the street gamblers who interrupt the orderly flow of communication. Finally, at the fringe of ide-ologies we often find a suburban belt of retired or secluded ideas, that don´t participate in the democratic communion as vigorously as they could, for which there was no central place in the logos.
The comparison is certainly appealing (particularly once we parallel historical evolutions, for example decentrali-sation of urban forms and decentralidecentrali-sation of ideologies),
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yet should not be overstretched. There are important differences, and these seem far more valuable than the analogies. For instance, except at a very embryonic, medieval or indeed mythological stage, cities are built and modified from within; they are explosive. Ideologies, by contrast, tend to be implosive: they are contained, enclosed, wrapped. They are ideas in a neat package, masterminded from an outside: ´here stand we, there stands our ideology.´
Even in a totalitarian twentieth-century setting, ideology takes the form of a book that can be closed; ideology rest when we rest, and disappears when we concentrate upon other things, such as physical labour, or pursue routine, non-ideological behaviour. It is a thing apart.
In this, ideology reveals itself as a child of philosophy, which also rests when we rest.
Practised as a conscious processing, as a making non-sense or non-sense [logos] of ideas, as the making of ideology, philosophy too is experienced as a momentary suspension of ´ordinary language´, ´ordinary thoughts´
and ´common sense´. There exists a repertoire of exis-tential, everyday routines, from which philosophy seeks to deviate and differentiate itself, and into which the philosophical ´state of mind´, once it is exhausted, col-lapses again. You have to want it to get it and that, incidentally, is why philosophy often becomes a test of will-power. Thought doesn´t tend towards a solution, it tends to contract and disappear when the will-power fizzles out. ´We recognise that the problem of life has been solved when it disappears´, writes Wittgenstein in the Tractatus logicus-philosophicus ´ on the last page (§6.521).
Can a city ever be ´closed´, stored away, laid ad acta in this manner? When philosophies and their ideological offspring talk about ´appearance versus reality´, ´struc-ture versus super-struc´struc-ture´ or indeed ´the possibil-ity of the impossible´, they are trying to articulate and come to grips with themselves: trying to interpret in a complex way the simple fact that they only work when you happen to be in the right mood for them. But for the city-dweller, the city is a place of many different moods. Our subjective ´relationship´ to the city is one of constant companionship, not of provisional spectacle.
Unlike a book, a city is never closed. Over a certain space of time, we will have felt hope and resigna-tion, love and hate, impatience and acceleration etc., all within the city. Sometimes the fact that the city is
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always there, indifferent to our mood-swings, can in itself be a source of an ´urban mood´, a potent mix of claustrophobia and escapism, of radical confrontation and invisible resignation. Because of this constant com-panionship, the urban form affords a depth of situation that ideologies never do. Cities account for a lot of the most stimulating inquiries humans have undertaken, be they in film, literature, art, architecture or politics. By contrast, all that we have ever gotten from ideologies is propaganda.
These cursory indications can help us sense why it might be misleading to ´think about urbanism´ or to construct a ´relation´ between ourselves and architecture.
The city is a place of constant approximation and prox-imity: we don´t stand outside it and negotiate freely the terms of a relationship, nor are we inside it, engaged in a perfect, and perfectly circular communication. Such moments do exist, but they are occasional. They punc-tuate the life of a couple, they are the commas and full-stops that provide temporary, ecstatic relief. Relief from long stretches of complex proximity, intimacy and diplomacy: the constant suspense and tension created by collisions, confrontations, contacts, by sensitive touches and vulgar injuries, by caresses that cannot in any way be summarised. All of this gets glossed over every time we talk of ´having a relationship´.
In the city, we cannot stand back, little as we can step forward. Strictly speaking, it also isn´t accurate to say that we are ´immersed´ in an urban form. Rather, it seems we are situated or indeed trapped in a constel-lation or matrix of elements, living in proximity to one another, in proximity with ourselves, with architecture, objects, ideas. The urban ´form´ can never be a synthe-sis or a communication, it can just be a sort of con-centration.
Similarly, living in a city is hardly about figuring things out systematically and acquiring professional compe-tence; in the city everyone is an amateur, trying to get by, trying to squeeze between or get around the next obstacles by some form of do-it-yourself. We don´t ever really know about each other, we just find ways of get-ting in touch, getget-ting by, finding some points of con-tact or orientation. Even deep love for a city can never be possessive: it is accumulative. Fragments, moments, memories are simply collected, gathered without ideology or system. They become the basis of a repertoire
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of urban life, a mixture of awareness and forgetting, of skill, routine and ritual, where nothing is decided upon in advance.
Because the repertoire is already a form of submersion, it cannot be a subversive concept. There is no way of getting around this approximate state of being, of being ahead of urban life or falling behind it. Which points us to the utopian dimension of our initial question (´how is ideology itself an urban form?´): if in the future the ideologies of philosophy, architecture and urbanism were themselves to be such approximate urban life forms (and we have seen that they are not), what would they be like?
It seems they would no longer be spectacle and thea-tre, just theatrics laid bare. They could be neither dis-tinguished from nor con-fused with reality. Instead, such utopian thought would be a way of inserting ourselves in the gap that exists between the life of a city and the life of an idea, in tangential proximity to both. A utopian ideology wouldn´t go all the way as we expect it to, just half the way. It would be a medium-point characterised not by forceful argument and spectacle, the eloquent communiqués architects and philosophers have become accustomed to, but inspired by something akin to the actuality and natural immediacy that can sometimes be felt when turning a street-corner.
Fabian Faltin is a writer, ghost-writer, and translator. He is currently completing a philosophy of the repertoire at Sciences Po, Paris, and can be contacted at fabian_faltin@hotmail.com
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<1941
<1941
<1941 1941 - 1970 1941 -
1970
1970 - 2005
2015?
Supersuburbia By
UAS We got a new city form. Without anyone noticing a new type of city has developed. While everyone was talking about the future of the sprawling urban fringes those places have been developing into urban typologies that are superior to cities. – Into supersuburbias.
Supersuburbias are small towns with around 20,000 inhabitants located on the fringes of larger cities. They are mergers of multiple villages but still disguised as village-counties. In reality however we are dealing with a specifi c form of city that is employing a camoufl age strategy – cities in village’s clothing. Since the 70’s the middle class has continually been
Wir haben eine neue Stadtform. Ohne das wir es gemerkt haben, hat sich ein neuer Typus Stadt entwickelt. In Zeiten, in denen noch jedermann über die Zukunft der zersiedelten Stadtränder diskutiert, haben diese sich schon längst weiterentwickelt in Stadtformen, die etablierten Städten überle-gen sind – in Supersuburbias.
Supersuburbias sind Kleinstädte, um die 20.000 Einwohner, die an den Rändern größerer Städte aus dem Zusammenschluss jeweils mehrerer Dörfer entstanden sind und sich zur Zeit noch unter dem Begriff
„Gemeinde“ tarnen. Tatsächlich haben wir es hier mit einer speziellen Stadtform zu tun, die gezielt eine Camoufl agestrategie einsetzt - Städte in Dorfspelzen. Seit den 70er Jahren strömte kontinuierlich die Mittelklasse aus den Städten in diese stadtnahen Dörfer.
Die Dörfer wuchsen und verschmolzen mit Nachbardörfern zu größeren Dörfern mit neuen Namen. Die großen Dörfer wuch-sen weiter und vereinigten sich erneut mit weiteren Ortschaften zu den heute überall sichtbaren Stadtrandgemeinden. Aus kleinen Dörfern werden z.B. Industriestandorte und später wieder Wohnorte. Ortschaften schliessen sich zusammen und teilen sich später wieder, um sich erneut selbst zu erschaffen. Diese Gemeinden haben keine festgeschriebene Identitaet, sondern sind offen für Erweiterungen, Neuinterpreta-tionen, Erneuerungen und Widersprüch-lichkeiten.
In gewisser Hinsicht aber können Stadtrand-gemeinden als urbane Zwischenformen ges-ehen werden, größer als Dörfer aber kleiner als Städte. Ihre lage unmittelbar am Rand von großen Städten ermoeglicht es diesen Stadtrandgemeinden sie sich als städtische Parasiten zu Supersuburbias entwickeln. Das Potential zu Supersuburbias bekommen sie, durch ihre strategisch ideale Platzierung an den überregionalen Autobahnen, die an den Stadträndern entlang laufen. In kürzester Zeit gelangt man aus diesen Gemeinden in die großen Städte. Die Bewohner dieser Gemeinden haben alle Optionen einer
Since 1941 the Supersuburbia Lohfelden changed its identity every thirty years. In 1941 the agrarian villages Crumbach and Ochsenhausen merged to form the village Lohfelden. In 1970 then Lohfelden merged with Vollmarshausen to become the major county Lohfelden. What until several decades ago used to be a group of villages that were loosely organized in a county is now an amalgamate of multiple villages, industrial areas, a highway exit, single family homes and even the fi rst derelict plots that completely fi lls the formerly loose bound-ary of the county.
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